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Now I watch a lot of broadcast TV and you should too. It’s the best way to gather information about the world other than the dark web but you aren’t ready for that. Patience.

When I’m not watching the #1 rated drama on US network television, NCIS, or one of its clones, on Sunday nights I sometimes creep over to the so-called “Public” television outlets on my high speed digital network. Now today, in this 21st Century Comb-Over Era, perception and expectation are everything, and I expect to only perceive British accents over on what we will now call for brevity’s sake, the PBS television network.

On a Sunday evening I expect to relax to some BBC 19th century parlor drama on my local public television station. Some programs on Public Television are actually from other UK production outlets like the commercial ITV. This is fine by me as long as they get the accent right. I’m as free market as the next yob when it comes to high brow television. But what’s got me really upset now is that they are starting to screen inferior accented series from Australia and New Zealand on public television. As if we couldn’t tell the difference between a British accent and an Aussie accent. Some people may be fooled, but not me. When I see my Pride and Prejudice I don’t want anybody popping off to Outback Steakhouse during the sponsor breaks at pledge time.

Unlike the US, Australia and New Zealand are just down in the mouth British colonies that couldn’t make it on their own. Australia is just a shabby California. There’s nothing high brow or hoity-toity about these convict transportation camps that would interest the more advanced American viewers of TV like myself. It’s shameful to screen ersatz Brideshead Revisiteds next to genuine smart English television content. You can always perceive when someone is trying to make it on the cheap. Substitute margarine for butter. Made in Polynesia for made in the UK. A downturn in pledge dollars doesn’t have to mean a sacrifice in quality. How much could reruns of Good Neighbors or As Time Goes By cost? As in all British TV, economical production values are overcome by high brow accents and big words where smaller words would normally suffice on large budget US TV programs like NCIS. That’s what the literate public TV viewer expects. Not G’day or throw another kangaroo on the barbie. Public TV has lost its rudder.

Alistair Cooke – More American than Apple Pie

Now we accept Irish, Scots, and Welsh or even Indian accents in our public television content because these are necessary for verisimilitude especially when properly accented English people are really in charge. This is only logical. Every country has its aboriginal peoples. Even America has Southern accents, but nobody is going to believe a documentary series about our founding fathers where people talk like they are from Atlanta or Sydney, people expect a British accent, and a low budget British production in some dreary castle would be even better. After all who is better suited to present past glories than the British? Nobody in America wants to see stories about small villages in the 1940s, or the 19th century in Australia or New Zealand and if public TV thinks they can foist this on American pledge givers as British programming just because cable network BBC America now gets the cream of British programming, along with the Star Trek franchise, well they need to wake up and smell the tea brewing. Pasty complexions, bad teeth and posh accents are what we expect on Sunday night.

Now with Brexit on the horizon the fear is that even more Oceania programming will make it onto the lucrative US public TV market. I say don’t stand for it. God Save the Queen! Vote with your pledge dollars. Sure you can expect lower production values in British television as a result but these can always be overcome with longer words and posher accents. More specials with dead 1950s and ’60s doo wop and pop groups are no substitute for high brow British mini series.

One yearns for the days when Alistair Cooke introduced Masterpiece with the proper Theater sup-pended to it. However, Alan Cummings, although with a Scots accent, is almost more an American staple than Cooke. Now if only the current content were as good.

I say put the Theater back in Masterpiece and take the Masterpiece out of Mystery. Don’t stand for inferior colonial programming. The next thing you know they’ll be putting programming from the ultimate failed colony, Canada, on public TV. The most patriotic thing you can do today is write to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or your local PBS station to keep our American public television exclusively British.

You know I love television, I’ve promoted its cultural, psychological, and physical benefits here in this blog enough. You know that. But the Emmys are the one exception. This batch of back slapping circle jerkers get together each year to supposedly “celebrate” the best of the best. Well, I’m going to tell you this incestuous relationship only leads to celebrating the worst of the best, the best being TV of course. If this was truly the best where was River Monsters? Where were the Kardashians on the so called red carpet? Where were the housewives of New Jersey, the Amish Mafia, The Barefoot Contessa? And most of all, where was season 11 of the most watched drama on network television, Naval Criminal Investigative Service? Where was Emily Wickersham? What a joke. Most importantly, where was my vote? Where does the common man/woman get his/her say?

Meanwhile shows like Orange is the New Crap, Game of Throwups, Downtown Abbey continue to garner undeserved accolades. Talk about a crime that should be investigated. Put Gibbs’ team on it!

The problem is the Emmy council, or whatever you call it, is run by one of the international conspiracy outfits, the highly secretive Bilderbergs, The Council on Foreign Relations, or the Trilateral Commission. Maybe somebody else. I’m sure Alex Jones knows. It’s another example of the elite oligarchs thinking they know what’s better for “the masses.” The idea should not be about what’s good for us, but about maintaining the liberty of our entertainment choices. These eggheads and silver spoon manipulators think they should rule the common man for his own good. Well listen up folks, the last time I checked this was still a representative republic and not a dictatorship. But democracy only happens when the common man takes the military-industrial-media bull by the horns and dumps the elites out of the thrones of Emmy power.

Good TV

We need the equivalent of an Emmy Tea Party. Boycott the awarded shows on cable and streaming media. Threaten to drop HBO and PBS from your satellite package. On commercial television refuse to buy from corporations that continue to advertise during these bad shows. Disguise ourselves as ethnic stereotypes and raid the local Best Buy or WalMart and dump the DVDs for shows like Big Bang Theory or the overtly socialist Saturday Night Live into the equivalent of Boston Harbor. Make the Emmy a death sentence for any show that truly doesn’t deserve it. That is the only chink in the armor of the elite media types and we need to drive a wedge into it. All they respond to is money, money, money, so hit ’em where it hurts ’em the most.

Bad TV

Only if we, the common people, wrestle the reigns of power from the elitist snobs and the fixers can we hope to keep television the life enriching, some say life saving medium, it was always meant to be. Maybe then the Emmys will mean something good. Otherwise you are going to be consigned to watching Modern Family for the rest of your life. Need I say more?

Somewhere in the David Tennant era the train came off the tracks. It started to be about romance, too many episodes were on earth, there were too many folks following the Doctor around and related to him, too much self-reference to previous lives and eras, too many people actually saying “Doctor Who?” out loud. Too few good stories. Steven Moffat took control and things really got awful. In the last few years I can only think of a handful of episodes I really enjoyed. I think the Doctor actors have come off pretty well as characters, but especially Matt Smith was fed almost nothing but crap for scripts. He did as well as he could.

If you go back to the first era the series really petered out during the Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy Doctors. BBC screwed up the franchise then with poor writers and poor choices for Doctors seeing it still as a children’s program with little potential beyond that, and it’s on the verge now. Similar to what NBC did to Star Trek in the ’60s. Capaldi is a good choice for an actor but somebody has to hand him a bloody script.

Doctor What?

You cannot save this by bringing back the Daleks to menace the earth once again. How many times have we seen that? Quit bringing back “beloved” characters from previous episodes, eras, without some original and exciting writing to go with it. Piss on the romance. It was always about affection not romance. A certain amount of sexual tension is good until outright romance jumps the shark; a grasping at simpering sentimentality instead of good writing.

Thomas Ligotti is my kind of guy, sorta. He always expects the worst. He spends all his time worrying about how he’s going to suffer and die and expects that everyone else is just the same, except some of us are better at fooling ourselves about the outcome. That makes him mad. He thinks all the folks that don’t worry about dying and suffering are deceiving themselves and just distracting themselves with ideas of afterlives or just having a good time, you know, trying not to think about it. And he’s right, but these other folks are a whole lot happier than he is. Now we can see the real problem, sorta.

Ligotti has a big head, a really big head and that’s why he thinks about all these dreary things all the time instead of watching television or playing golf. He’s always talking about how consciousness and self awareness are a tragedy and a curse on humankind; a crappy adaptation that evolution sneaked in there. The thing he forgets is most people are really unconscious most of the time anyway, even when they’re not sleeping; they’re clueless about this kind of stuff, so why does he want to remind them and take them into his pity party? Leave them alone with their fairy tale lives. Don’t bring ’em down. Don’t rain on their parade. Not enough hobbies I guess. Not enough television. Not enough high speed internet downloading those “short films.”

Well what’s Ligotti’s answer? Don’t have any kids. That’s it. What, you say? That makes him feel better about things? Yeah, his basic argument is that by having kids we doom all the future generations to the suffering and death we have so we shouldn’t have any: antinatalism they call it. Let the species die out. Well if Ligotti had any kids he wouldn’t be worrying about his great grandbaby’s suffering, he’d be worrying about his own suffering trying to deal with his own kids, getting them through college and boyfriends, etc. I bet his parents suffered plenty with him. Forget about future generation’s suffering. Besides his kids would be the kind that would suffer because all the bullies would rag them about their egghead dad.

I think his problem maybe is really low testosterone and therefore low sperm count. He isn’t gettin’ it on enough. Only those coffin chicks would even consider hangin’ out with him he’s so dreary and down. He needs to jerk it more too, take some of the tension and pressure off it. He can’t have kids so he wants us to join him. Sour grapes.

Ligotti writes a horror story about once every decade or so, when he isn’t feeling sorry for himself and the rest of us. They’re pretty good, but enigmatic. Now I don’t expect you to understand a word like that, nor a story like that, because you are correctly spending your time feeling good and not worrying about future generation’s suffering or how the joke’s on us. Stay away from funerals. Hide the razorblades.

Sure, we’re all going to step off the pier sometime, but why waste any time thinking about that? Remember I told you to always expect the worst, so now that that’s over let’s move on to feelin’ good.

I’ve given you all the prescription you need in this blog to quit thinking about that dirt nap: TV, NCIS, loud music, giant monster movies, malt liquor. So, mix up some cocktails and turn on the wide screen to some NCIS and put a Chuck Berry record on that stereo set ’cause we’re goin’ out with a buzz in our heads and a smile on our faces.

What’s so bad about feelin’ good for the rest of your miserable little life?

Everyone knows that all music is better played faster and louder. It’s a fact. Wired into our genes, just like anything in life is better on television, as those of you that have, against my advice, gone to Brazil to watch World Cup Soccer in person have also found out. Should have just stayed at home in the comfort of your own little cabin and watched on your 72 inch Samsung. Everything is better on television. Period. You wouldn’t have had your purse snatched in Rio either.

And every kind of music is better when played faster and louder. Period. The unhallowed premier purveyors of this self-evident fact is the band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. These boys have been bangin’ it out for years unrecognized and shunned by the larger media. It is almost as if there was a conspiracy against this getting out.

Album after album, genre after genre, put through the buzzsaw of distorted guitars and frantic backbeats proving each and every time the song would have been better if played this way. Why hasn’t this caught on? Why haven’t Christina Aguilera and Barbara Streisand championed the cause of chainsaw guitars and frantic paced power chords in pop music? The media. Once again it’s a media conspiracy back-fueled by the music industry and ultimately the entire entertainment industrial complex to promote stars that are on top one day and then cast aside for another unknown under the music industry shackles tomorrow. If you and I were in charge none of this would be allowed to stand.

I could go on and on about this, and I will at some future time, but right now let’s get back in the trenches and talk about those that are trying to bring the truth back to the people.

The Me Firsts. Starting way back in 1995 these boys have been putting out themed albums of various genres and styles, everything from Broadway musicals to R&B to C&W. Every single cut has been better than the original: buzzsaw chords and a frantic pace. Every once in awhile they sneak in an old punk riff just to prove that even these songs were better than all of the top 40 “songs” today. Once you’ve heard “The Way We Were” you’ll wonder why Barbara Streisand never sported a black leather jacket and a pink mohawk.

Not much more to say. The music industry and media conspiracy are too powerful to ever be threatened and changed unless you want to end up taking the dirt nap, or at least your dog will. Sadly Justin Timberlake and Katy Perry are never going to “kick out the jams.”

No, I’m not talking about groping foreigners so all you NSA peepers can leave now.

What I want to talk about is the increase and predominance of non-US hits this blog is getting. Either I’ve managed to thoroughly piss off the OUS community or people outside the United States are starting to now do what you in the US have only been able to do up ’til now: apply my life-changing formulas to your lives. I know which one I’m voting for.

Unlike people in the US, Europeans have long embraced my concept of a D-minus effort. Europeans enjoy months of vacation annually along with a holiday practically every-other week. In addition, work weeks are often legislated to be less than 40 hours and nobody has to worry about health insurance, so I’m surprised any Europeans or Canadians work at all since this lack is what primarily entices many Americans into the workforce in the first place. On top of this, scandalous unemployment has made, by comparison, the US look like the land of milk and honey it most certainly isn’t.

It is also clear that most foreigners embrace the concept of always making sure somebody else is that last guy.

Hey, now that I think of it, maybe I’m just preaching to the choir here. Perhaps most OUS hits are just losers affirming their lifestyle. Sometimes people just like to be reassured of things they already knew deep down inside.

What Foreigners Do for Fun

The worst thing about traveling internationally is television. Except for imported US programs, the fare produced and broadcast overseas is distinctly inferior. Britain is particularly bad with endless parlor dramas and talking heads all produced by the government. The fact that some of these shows are actually imported to America is beyond me. Most of them end up on public television, in other words US socialist TV. Hardly anyone except a few really old people watch public TV in the US so these imports hardly make a dent in the A+ prime US television offerings. The programs are mostly old so you get elderly US tourists to the UK going on about episodes of Eastenders from decades ago. East Germany had the worst TV I ever saw. France was the best with triple-X programs on the cable late at night that made Skinemax look like Mr. Rogers. In Japan the only thing going was the seemingly endless pop music programs.

Yeah, you know it. I’m talking about the Olympics, that Grecian spectacle of the best “amateur sports talent” the world has to offer. I could provide another cogent and timely expose about the Olympics in general, but you already know I’m going to focus on the ultimate in Olympic swindles: the Winter Games.

You already know of my disdain for the corrupt world of spectator sports in general from chess to the ultimate fixer sport: NBA basketball, so I’m not going over that again. There are numerous posts in the archive that any pinhead can see about the sorry state of spectator sports, so go there for the lowdown and my on-target comments on that life-entertainment waster.

Let’s jump right into the ultimate sports Ponzi scheme. If you hadn’t already figured it out the Winter Olympics is merely an inferior spin-off of the Summer Olympics. When the Olympics were brought back from their justly deserved grave there were only Summer games. This actually made some kind of sense since Greece, the site of the real historical Olympics, was a nice summery place. They didn’t even know anything about snow shoeing, much less ice dancing, in Greece. So some get rich media con men realized that playing childrens games only in the summer meant that only fair weather “sports” were going to be featured. “Hey, hows about we make some more money off the suckers by staging a winter event, then we can rake in a bunch more dough in places like Norway and Canada where the yokels are too stupid to know they could get a nice condo down South and avoid the bad climate?” Well, anyone with only half a brain like you could see that this was going to catch on with the masses like a bottle of Jack Daniels at an AA meeting.

Instead of having the only legitimate full-contact scoring sport possible for the Winter Olympics, ice hockey, the paddock had to be filled with such pseudo sports as curling, biathalon, speed skating, figure skating, cross country skiing, and similar non-events. The only thing close to a sport other than hockey were the so-called Alpine events which all basically consisted of seeing who could fall down a mountain the fastest. Again, I think you can see why these events would appeal to people who only see the sun for half the year. The incredible thing is these non-events are pandered to a global community population many of whom live in tropical or sub-tropical zones where they are still wildly popular to watch.

Not to be outdone in the con game, some wise fixer figured that having both the summer and Winter Olympics in the same 12 months was a marketing snafu so they brilliantly alternated the summer and winter games to be every other year. Now the suckers would have the five rings of confidence tricksters in front of them all the time instead of just once every four years.

This year’s Wintercon is in the former Soviet republic of Russia. In the Wikipedia entry for Sochi it is listed as not only claiming to be the longest (?) city in the world but “was primarily Muslim before 1864” but now is “primarily Christian.” I wonder what hallowed event in 1864 caused all those conversions? We are all hopeful that there are not some hunkered down Chechens in Sochi province thinking about 1864 intending to reenact the 1972 tragedy at the Munich summer games. Anyway, don’t let the Chechens compete in the biathlon and everything will be all right.

Official Sochi Olympics Welcoming Committee

Now that we have established Sochi as the Eastern bastion of peaceful ethnic bliss that every Olympic host city should be, we can get down to the real nitty-gritty of why this is the worst possible way you can spend your entertainment time this winter: boring and pre-staged. The fact that some of my favorite shows are going to be preempted for this sham is blasphemy and you know the other networks are just going to peg reruns and endless cycles of The Green Lantern until this ratings fiasco is over.

One of the biggest problems the winter games has is a dearth of scoring sports. Other than ice hockey it is really only curling and we already know that any sport where you can smoke a cigarette while playing it is going to be duller than dishwater. Really if you get right down to it you know this north of the border version of shuffleboard has gotta be sad when the hottest player is going to be known as “The Janitor.” I don’t care if there are curling clubs all over Canada. There are rats all over Calcutta and we don’t have rat bashing as an Olympic sport. I rest my case.

Speed skating dull. Ice dancing, not a sport. Figure skating, fixed and also not a real scoring sport. All downhill sports, dull except maybe for ski jumping. Ski jumping would actually be better if they put some of those tire slashers that they use to catch criminals down the slope. You would have to get over these clean to even place. Adds that Evel Knievel factor that would class up the “sport.” Bob sled and luge, again falling down a hill and too few spectacular crashes. X-sports, mainly to attract children and winter-bored skateboarders. All shooting sports, no comment except to say that live ammunition assassins along the course could make this worthwhile TV fare, even more exciting with a live audience along the way. Cross country skiing, give me a break!

So now you know the sad truth about another of the bread and circuses the suckered masses are going to sit down to instead of reading a book or watching the NCIS marathons on the USA cable network. Talk about wasting your life!

I took a little hiatus after the 50th post. I figured I deserved a little rest. Even a servant gets to sleep once in awhile. But I’m back and ready to take on another important topic for your betterment.

I was reading about this big bicycle race, the so-called Tour de France, the other day. I know it’s not really bike racing weather here in the northern hemisphere but no time is the wrong time when you find out something that is to everyone’s benefit. The Tour de France is a complete sham! A total spectator sport swindle. For those of you who don’t know what the Tour de France is, and I know many of you don’t get out of bed much, much less keep up with any sports other than boxing, professional wrestling, and dog racing, the Tour de France is a supposed bicycle “race” where guys ride bikes all over France and then finally come to a finish where somebody, no doubt some steroid crazed pretty-boy with a Hollywood contract already in his back pocket, “wins” the race. So what’s the big deal about that you say? I’ll tell you the many reasons why, and by the time I’m done you’ll want to take a shower if you just read about the Tour de France in the newspaper.

Let’s start this tirade with my usual disdain for “spectator” sports in general. Why anybody watches any other adult play a children’s game is beyond me. If you are not going to do it or aren’t trying to learn how to do it, why watch it? Everything from ice dancing to professional football is a waste of your life and valuable entertainment time. Let’s start with the basic statistics, you already know whatever team, or jockey, or bowler you are watching is going to lose approximately half the time. Who invites a 50% failure rate into their lives? Now I’ve told you all to expect the worst, but this is different, this is hoping for the worst and that is a much different thing my friend. Just because you know you are a loser doesn’t mean you have to roll out the red carpet for it. That’s just crazy!

The other reason I hate spectator sports is they are boring. Even when the time isn’t taken up with endless commercials for Duck Dynasty Chia Pets, nothing pretty much happens. Everybody just runs around mostly. Even in high scoring basketball, the ultimate fixer sport, only about one one-millionth of the time is actually spent scoring, the only half-way useful thing that happens during a “game.” Even if the scoring aspect was somehow increased in each sport, how much can you watch a ball going through a net or someone spinning in the air? Compare this to watching the Three Stooges or Castle of Blood and I think I’ve made my point. By comparison you sports fanatics are just wasting your useless lives. Besides, while watching films and TV shows you might actually learn something, like how medieval siege engines work, but you know nothing can come of watching that lacrosse contest. If the alternative in this hell we call life was watching a fly crawl up the wall, then maybe sports would be a step up from your present misery, but this just isn’t the case with cable, WiFi, satellite, and 4G available almost everywhere.

Typical “accident”

Next comes the rigging. Everyone knows that everything from wrestling to to tiddley-winks is run by the mob nowadays. The outcomes are more or less a foregone conclusion. If somebody steps out of line with a muffed dive or a caught pass, then they run the risk of keeping Jimmy Hoffa company. Once the big money came in, what little was left of interest in synchronized swimming was gone. For awhile drownings became synonymous with fair play until the athletes wised up and started following mafia orders. If this alone doesn’t put you off sports, well you are just a hopeless waste of human flesh.

Next we have to deal with the aesthetics of bicycle racing. The helmets are stupid, dorky looking things that sit on top of your head like a hen on a nest. At least in sports like auto racing, football, and hockey the headgear looks butch. Also those tight racing pants don’t look good on most people and are a turn off in a sport that you would think would want to be more inclusive. There is supposed to be zero contact in bike racing and even when there is contact the crashes are usually uneventful, unlike auto racing. ‘Nuff said.

Now here is where the real BS nonsense about the Tour de France comes in. Say it takes two weeks, ten days, a month, I dunno it doesn’t matter I’m too lazy to look it up and the exact number doesn’t matter; it takes more than a couple of days for the Tour de France to finish, it’s a really long race. But here’s the real crapola, they get to go to a hotel and get a hot meal and sleep a few hours every day before they all get up to start again at the same time from the same place! You think they are killing themselves with this day and night torture of riding all over France but really they are just having a nice ride, looking at a couple of chateaus each day, stopping for some wine tastings, and all finishing at the same place to have a few cocktails and some escargot each and every night. Who do they think they’re fooling?

Mafia “spectator”

Well, they also do this thing called “sharing the yellow jersey” which means that a different guy gets to do the heavy lifting each day while the others try to knock the other jockeys off their bikes or just enjoy the day. It doesn’t matter because they all get to start over again tomorrow unless they have a heart attack, fall off a cliff, or get run over by a car.

Typical steroid crazed pretty boy

So now you see how it goes. The only day that “matters” is the last day of the race. So everyone stores it up and gets their blood doped, and takes their steroid shot, eats a big spaghetti dinner, and skips the vino for that night and gets a good night’s rest.

So how do you win? Just give the yellow jersey to the best, most rested guy on the last day and have the other guys on the “team” throw banana skins out on the track all day. Except for the teams that are being paid off to take a dive. These teams drop out along the way due to so-called “accidents” like a squirrel in the spokes or a “leg cramp.” The fixers are all along the final leg of the race to make sure each racer does what he’s been paid to do. It has even been reported that a few “warning shots” have been taken at certain racers that had “second thoughts” about throwing the race.

Mob Fixer

So there you go, what was already as dull as dirty dish water to begin with becomes even less interesting when you realize it’s all a sham. The only real excitement that comes is if you can get an insider tip and make a little money off the race. Even then it’s not too smart to win too much because then you are going to get a visit from “Vinnie” and your dog is going to wander off or worse. If you keep your winnings modest all you’ll get is a “warning” Take it from me.

In recent times the Commissioner has tried to make the whole thing seem legit with trumped up charges of blood doping and steroid use. This is a joke. Everyone does these things. You could test any of the athletes and find the same thing. The only reason this happened is a new family in the mob took over power and now wants to show the others that they mean business.

Okay here’s a new one in the self-improvement vein. Most of you have little interest in improving your intellect so just piss off now, you’re wasting your time and my breath here. This is of no import to your life so just move on. For those of you still here, today’s critical essay is about the visual arts. It’s mainly about flat things you stick on the wall but we may touch on three dimensional objects known as sculptures too. What I’m going to do is try to bring your knowledge of art up to at least a Kindergarten level. It’s a tough pull but I’m game if you are..

Crap “Art”

Most colorful objects that you stick on the wall, so-called paintings, are crap. Why? Because they can’t move around and they are not about anything relevant. Since the advent of film and television the static graphic objects: paintings, prints, tapestries, sculpture, etc. are irrelevant and boring. Technology has passed traditional art by. It’s perpetually standing at the bus stop of history during a transit strike. It’s Luddite thinking.

More Crap

However before TV and movies paintings and such were relevant forms of entertainment. There was nothing to do except reading parlor novels and playing the piano, so if you weren’t musically gifted, as you surely aren’t, sitting around literally watching the paint dry was pretty exciting. But of course the graphic arts went through its ups and downs too. There was okay art like the Impressionists and bad art like Cubism and Jackson Pollock.

Dogs Playing Cards

Well the pinnacle of oil painting and most static art in general was Dogs Playing Cards. Yep, you knew it deep down inside if you have ever seen this collection of 19 paintings by the unjustly overlooked C.M. Coolidge. If you look at the Wikipedia entry for this there is a lot of misinformation probably added by some self styled artiste. Don’t believe it. I’m here to set the record straight. Any simp can edit Wikipedia and there is a lot of nonsense in there like the earth is 4 billion year old and earthquakes are from the continents moving around (Did you ever see a continent move?). As if. Just because these were commissioned for cigar adverts doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be the best paintings that ever were. It is well known that lesser achievements like the Moana Lisa were painted to sell olive oil and Andy Warhol was commissioned to sell canned soup. So there!

Vintage Olive Oil Adverts

But C.M. was no sellout. I know for a fact that he was really commissioned to paint people playing poker but true to his artistic ideals he refused to change his subject matter and you cannot say he wasn’t a true revolutionary, nobody painted dogs doing stuff other than walking around or chasing foxes before this. He risked being ridiculed and never making a dime. My personal favorite has always been Sitting Up With a Sick Friend but all of them are classic. Coolidge even created the school of anthropomorphic art and this has continued until even today, but the zenith was still Dogs Playing Cards, a success never to be equaled.

Sitting Up With A Sick Friend

To digress for a moment, one thing that Dogs Playing Cards has also shown is that women don’t get true art. Women just don’t dig Dogs Playing Cards, or the Three Stooges for that matter. Dogs Playing Cards prints can mostly be found in places like a wood paneled finished basement where the pool table or second TV with the video games usually are; a man’s realm. Or so called “Men’s Clubs” around the bar area. Men appreciate good art and drunks can spend literally hours looking at the exquisite details in these paintings when they aren’t watching sports or action movies..

Well even Dogs Playing Cards is ignored these days, swamped by the technological artistic wonders of television, movies, and “short films” on the internet static art has been left behind. Now the only reason to buy a a painting or print is to cover a hole or stain on the wall, or a safe. You might as well put another TV up anywhere where there used to be a painting.

So go out right now and get some Dogs Playing Cards prints to cover up that place where you put your fist through the wall in a drunken rage. Also avoid those self styled art museums like the plague unless you want to be frisked for a few bucks to look at your shoes for two hours. Go to a movie instead. Better yet find a rerun of NCIS on TV and If you got this far, don’t say I never did anything for you.

Well they say the government is shut down but you couldn’t tell by me. The television is still on and my internet still works so I can still download those “short” films I need. I even got some junk mail today Some guys were repaving a road near my house and the cops were still looking for speeders. The Affordable Care Act was up and running although a little clogged up by all those people that didn’t want affordable health insurance. So what’s the big deal with the federal government shutting down? Maybe we should take an extended holiday. I hope the tax man is sitting at home saying: “I’m screwed because people didn’t send in enough taxes.” That’d serve him right. Somebody told me the National Parks are closed now. So what? Give ’em back to nature or better yet the Indians they stole them from. Just pack up and throw the keys to the nearest reservation and say, “sorry we ruined part of it.” Nobody really ever wanted to hike or bike or raft or camp in them anyway. People just say they want to do that kind of stuff to impress their friends but they really wanna watch TV. I bet the Indians would take better care of it than the federal government did anyway. Pull up all the asphalt and make it nice again.

I read that the Post Office is $6 billion dollars in the hole too. I don’t get this. First why didn’t they already shut down like yesterday with a debt like that? They were already out of money before the federal government was. They could just pile all the stuff behind the post office and you could wade through it to find your stuff, your credit card apps and such.

Nobody who actually wants to get something ever mails it anyway. They use those UPS or FedEx outfits. I know that only the post office can deliver a letter but not if you put it in a little box first. Then anyone can deliver it. You can just say you’re sending some paper to your grandmother and off it goes. Besides people like getting a box to open instead of just an envelope. It’s more exciting. These other outfits can’t put anything in a mailbox because you don’t own it, the Post Office does! Did you know that? So the UPS dude has to come to your door just like the Post Office used to, that way it’s kinda like the good ol’ days anyway.

Nobody is gonna miss the junk mail either and and it saves a lot of trees.

Anyway the federal government looks like it’ll be shutdown for awhile and that’s not necessarily bad. Think of the traffic in D.C. that will free up. Everyone can go on vacation before it gets too cold. A lot of people like me probably won’t even notice for a long time. Eventually things like the Hoover Dam and stuff will fall down if no one takes care of it but I bet some savvy power company will buy it. The War on Drugs will have to be sidelined and eventually the military will have to come back to the US just to save a few bucks. Who’s gonna pay for that one way ticket home? I guess they could just tell everyone, “you’re on your own, do the best ya can.” The people in the military could probably get enough money by selling their weapons and stuff for a ticket home, especially if they shared. Embassies would be a little more difficult but they are usually in the better neighborhoods so you could sell them and probably get everyone home even from crappy countries. The immigration problem will take care of itself because when all the illegals realize the government is shut down they’ll leave because they can’t get any benefits anymore.

I dunno, the more I think about it the more I think we should just leave the federal government shut down. Those guys we all voted for never did anything we really wanted anyway.